Adam Habib in hot water over tweet

Johannesburg - Unprofessional for expressing his political views, hypocritical and a coward with an agenda.

These are some of the accusations that were hurled at Wits University vice-chancellor Adam Habib this week after he tweeted a picture taken from the Syrian conflict earlier this year, and mistakenly attributed it to what is happening in Gaza.

Habib’s tweet - “The consequence of Obama’s defence of Israel’s war in Gaza. How could we have allowed him to talk at Madiba’s funeral” - was accompanied by a picture of a child whose body was buried underneath concrete rubble with only the legs sticking out.

The tweet, which was retweeted over 300 times, solicited a flurry of responses, with some saying Habib was hypocritical for not taking into account that “Hamas put their own people in the line of fire”.

Kim Ravia tweeted: “Note how he (Habib) has no answer now to the issue of Hamas’s behaviour but he certainly knows how to criticise Israel at every turn.”

To which Roy Topol responded: “Which proves he has an agenda. He knows Hamas are terrorists but he refuses to condemn. Hypocrisy.”

Habib said he has condemned both sides in the Gaza and Israel conflict, and other atrocities in the Arab world.

He then tweeted a link to an article he penned for a weekly newspaper, saying it will clarify his stance on the Gaza conflict.

Habib said his criticism was not prompted by ethics or loyalty but rather human rights concerns.

“I could find another photo to demonstrate this but what would be the point. Let’s deal with the substance - children are dying,” he wrote.